Loving County Journal; Getting By in Nation's Richest Place

By LISA BELKIN, Special to the New York Times

Published: December 27, 1988

MENTONE, Tex.—
There are no Mercedes-Benzes here in the seat of the wealthiest county in the country, just some old pickup trucks. There are no jacuzzis, and drinking water has to be toted home from a communal well. There are no Gucci loafers, just mud-caked boots. Looking for haute cuisine? The only restaurant in town just closed.

A dozen people live in Mentone, and about 100 people live in all of Loving County's 664 square miles. The low population - an average of one person every six square miles - has a lot to do with why the county has the highest per capita income in the United States.

The few buildings you pass on a drive through the flat, dry West Texas land belong to oil drillers and ranchers. Because those businesses are there - despite the drought and the oil bust - every adult in Loving County is employed. A few are wealthy. Most are not. But the total income of the residents divided by their small number yields an average income of $34,173. That was far ahead of the second-highest place on the list, the town of Falls Church, Va., with an average income of $20,699.

Each time the United States Bureau of the Census puts Loving County on the top of the list - it did so in November as it did back in 1985 -it makes county residents chuckle.

''They don't go at measuring that right,'' said Sheriff Elgin R. Jones. ''Do we look like we're all rich?'' Mentone's landmarks include the gas station (brand unspecified), run by Mattie Thorpe (age ''none of your business).'' She wouldn't know if her neighbors are rich, she says, because: ''I don't care about no one else's business. I don't care too much for any of them. They never invite me to anything.''

Miss Thorpe's station, with shelves of canned beans, chewing gum and chocolate bars, is the only place in town to buy any food. To the west is a hut with two signs. One says ''Groceries.'' The other says ''Closed.'' Across the street is an empty dirty-white building that used to serve steaks, burgers and beers. Both places went out of business this summer.

''Not enough customers, I guess,'' Miss Thorpe said. ''But I never asked. I'm not interested.'' About 100 feet to the east is the Loving County Courthouse, built in 1935. Parked out front on a recent day was a pickup truck hitched to cattle trailer that held four young calves. The vehicles were sprawled diagonally across four parking spots with little regard for the white lines. The owner, Sheriff Jones, was not worried about a parking ticket.

He thinks raising cattle makes him a better sheriff. ''It keeps me out in the country,'' he said. ''I know who drives what kind of truck. Whose cattle is whose. Whose dog is whose.''

Sheriff Jones is also the Loving County tax collector, and he works quite closely with the county's tax assessor, Mary Belle Jones, who also happens to be his wife. She began working in the courthouse in 1970, when their five children were mostly grown and her husband's secretary quit. What started out as a temporary job soon became permanent.

In 1982 a state law took effect requiring every county to have its own assessor. Mrs. Jones, who had been doing that job for years anyway, took on that title.

Mrs. Jones confirms that the county is wealthy, at least on paper. The tax base is $231 million, she said, and with a tax rate of 33 cents on the dollar, that means about $8 million in taxes is owed to the county each year.

One thing that money is not spent on is schools. The county closed its school district in 1972, when there were only two school-age children and it was costing $146,000 to keep the district open.

Now the children of Loving County - ''there's J.J. and Dana and that little Wright boy and April and the two Crowe boys,'' Mrs. Jones said - go to school in Wink, 32 miles away.

Most of the tax money is used to finance the county government and maintain the county-owned roads, none of which are paved.

Recently the county paid to pipe drinking water to Mentone, since underground water is so full of salt and calcium that it is unusable. There are no dishwashers in Mentone because the water would break them.

For years the Joneses and their neighbors traveled outside the county for clean water, but as of this summer pipes bring water from a nearby county into a 500-gallon tank in the center of Mentone. Mr. Jones need drive only as far as that tank to refill the large water containers he keeps in his home.

To this, the nation's richest town, that is better than money. ''It's like being in heaven,'' Mrs. Jones said. ''It changed our lives.''